United States Patent Application Publication No.: US 2007/0214169 A1, published on Sep. 13, 2007 teaches a Multi-dimensional locating system and method (title). United States Patent Application Publication No.: US 2007/0271508 A1, published on Nov. 22, 2007 teaches a Multi-dimensional locating system and method (title). Both patent applications teach ways of managing and displaying documents on arrays of documents. What is taught in these documents have deficiencies.
For instance, one of the deficiencies becomes apparent when a first array of documents presents a group of documents having various attributes (or tags, categories . . . ) associated therewith. When selecting an attribute, either by selecting the attribute, or a document to select an attribute associated therewith, a second array of documents is enabled and displayed. The second array of documents, being either displayed non-parallel or parallel with the first array of documents, groups documents from the first array of documents having the selected attribute in common. Some documents from the first array of documents associated with the selected attribute will therefore appear a second time on the second array of documents. Displaying many times the same documents on different arrays of documents might be confusing for a user.
Another deficiency becomes apparent when a user wants to infer the attribute(s), value or the status of a document just by seeing a document. A document can be associated with a color associated therewith, however, the information transmitted by a color is not enough to properly translate more complex status or value of a document.
The meaning of a color or a pattern associated with a document is arbitrary. It might be desirable to use a color and a pattern that are already known in a complete non-analogous field and use the color and the pattern with documents to reduce the effort required to understand the meaning inferred by colors and patterns associated with documents.
Another deficiency becomes apparent when attributes, or tags, are used to categorize documents according to subjects, topics, categories or other means for linking to documents additional related information or documents. Attributes are associated with documents to categorize the documents and create a link among documents sharing the same attribute. This could be called a first-degree relationship. Thus, attributes are used to retrieve documents associated therewith. So, by selecting an attribute it is possible to retrieve the documents having the selected attribute associated therewith.
In certain circumstances it could be useful to draw a link between two documents, inter alia, that don't share a common attribute. It is therefore desirable to have a way to connect one document to another document despite they are not sharing any common attributes.
Another deficiency becomes apparent when multiple attributes are associated with documents. It can easily become time consuming to individually associate a plurality of attributes with documents.
One other deficiency becomes apparent when multiple attributes having substantially similar meaning are used. A query based on a specific attribute is unlikely to retrieve documents associated with another attribute despite the other attribute has a substantially similar meaning.
The prior art computer systems or computer interfaces have not provided solutions to deal with the aforementioned deficiencies and each of these deficiencies in the prior art yield a demand for an improved information managing system and method using an intuitive and natural way to visually present information as well as improved ways to manage associations between the documents.